U.S. asks Japan to defer beef-import ban

Tokyo concerned mad cow disease could sneak in

WASHINGTON — The United States is trying to talk Japan out of its threat to ban imports of U.S. beef over concerns about mad cow disease and may institute new food safety measures to reassure trading partners, officials said Thursday.

Japan's concerns were sparked by the discovery in May of a cow on a Canadian farm infected with the disease bovine spongiform encephalopathy.

The U.S. immediately banned trade with Canada in beef products, but the Agriculture Department has concluded that there is no mad cow outbreak in Canada and is preparing to reopen the border. No date for the reopening has been given.

The U.S. and Canadian beef markets are integrated, and cattle born in one nation routinely are shipped across the border for feeding or slaughter in the other.

But Japan, the world's largest export market for U.S. beef -- averaging more than $1 billion a year --has threatened to ban U.S. beef unless a labeling system is adopted that can certify that beef coming into Japan is from the U.S., not Canada.

Japan's ban was supposed to go into effect July 1, but the Agriculture Department persuaded Tokyo to delay the ban until Sept. 1 to give the U.S. time to address Japan's concern.

After a meeting with Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman on Thursday, Japanese Agriculture Minister Yoshiyuki Kamei said his country was still concerned Canadian beef could find its way to Japan via the United States.

Nothing settled

Veneman said that she and Kamei reached no agreement on what steps the U.S. must take to continue beef shipments.

"We are looking at a whole range of options right now," she said, "and I am simply not at liberty to discuss what may or may not happen."

Industry representatives said they are discussing with the Agriculture Department the possibility of establishing an animal tracking system to make it easier to trace the history of any animal in the event one is found to be infected with the disease. The domestic meat industry may also institute stricter procedures to separate edible meat from tissue thought to carry the disease, such as intestines, brain and spinal cord.

But Chandler Keys, spokesman for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, said there is no point instituting new procedures, such as a labeling system, simply to assuage the Japanese if they add nothing to the safety of the food supply.

"The Japanese are expecting us to do something that we don't believe is based on science," Keys said.

"We have the best system in the world," Keys said, noting that the Canadian cow never made it into the food supply because of the testing system that discovered the disease. "If we need to make tweaks to the system, we will."

Maralee Johnson, executive vice president of the Illinois Beef Association said, "Obviously, the disease is a concern for Illinois and the integrity of our herd."

While beef producers are willing to consider additional steps to ensure the safety of the meat supply, she said, "the one thing that we have to be careful about is that we can't have excessive costs that producers can't in some way recoup."

A Japanese official involved with the negotiations who asked not to be identified said it is possible Japan will accept something short of a labeling program distinguishing U.S. from Canadian beef. But this source said it would be up to the United States to offer an alternative proposal to Japan and prove its viability.

"They have not yet said what the alternative might be," the official said. "Personally, I don't think it is likely they will have one" in time for the September deadline.

Sniffing out protectionism

There is some suspicion in the U.S. industry that Japan is less concerned about beef safety and more concerned about protecting its domestic beef industry.

Japan had a mad-cow outbreak in September 2001, and Japanese beef consumption plummeted. After an extensive public relations campaign that was funded in part by $10 million from U.S. beef producers, Keys said beef consumption is on the rise again in Japan, and U.S. beef exports are back to their historic levels.